Comments on: Two Years of the Quaker Ranter and Quaker Blogs

By: Judy Tretheway

Judy Tretheway — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 21:35:46 +0000

Martin: I have so much enjoyed getting lost in your blog and others today.
I’m hoping you might point me in the direction I was hoping to go when I started.
I am looking for wisdom, queries, discussion about working with the old style of Quaker Journaling, in the context of blogs. I have been sharing a blog about my Call to teaching the contemplative practice of QiGong inside prisons for a year now. As I just reread the year, I was disappointed in myself for my lack of vulnerability and absorption with the daily goings on, verses the spiritual context, struggles and challenges that I have been through this year… Others may not be so hard on me as I am with myself, but I want to move in a deeper direction.
Can you point me to blogs of other social activists working out their Callings and talking about them in a spiritual context, maybe even as fellow Quakers?
I am ready to transform this blog of mine and seeking eldering.
I am concerned about pitfalls of pride held up with demonstrating the confidence that allows our life to preach especially in the context of writing about spiritual experiences.
Judy Tretheway
http://chifully.blogspirit.com
Pieces I cliped out of places I’ve been today:
(it is so much of a cliche of old Quaker journals that literary types classify it as part of the essential structure of the journals
What is the essential structure of a Quaker Journal?
For me, it is important to be ready to be transformed, ready to yield to the leadings of the Spirit, wherever the Spirit may take us. Making a decision based on reason has seldom had the lasting effect for me as making a decision based on readiness and faithfulness.
We are but simple human creatures and it is hard for us not to secretly tender some sort of pride within for what we’ve done—this of course is kindling for the Tempter. But if we trust in that which is eternal, and wait upon that proof, we can hold true.

By: Dave Carl

Dave Carl — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 18:17:28 +0000

Martin, I've been following your blog for about a year now. It introduced me to the entire Quaker blogging universe and has given me a lot of food for thought and reflection (and most recently led to opening my own blog-shop). I haven't always agreed with your posts: in my case you have both "comforted the afflicted" and "afflicted the comfortable." While I often can't "me-too" with you theologically, your writing has helped sharpen my own commitment to a Quakerism that is centered on "that which does not proceed from my own imaginings" - one way in which I most inelegantly define "God." So I'm grateful for your blogging ministry and am gratified as well that you will be involved in outreach with FGC. Outreach is a thing that has most concerned me here in the sparsely-Quakered environs of SCYM! David

By: Barry C.

Barry C. — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 22:12:22 +0000

Hi Martin:
Like the others, I’m glad you took the risk to do the QR. It was an inspiration for me to open about my own bumpy journey towards outreach or ministry. It’s also been a catalyst for a broader community to develop. I’m very excited about your new post with FGC and I beleive it’s the beginning of good things. You know you can call on me to support your efforts.
All the best,

By: Joe G.

Joe G. — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 12:52:32 +0000

Friend Martin, I'm happy to read that the worldly concerns of life have settled for you, and even provide an open door to pursue some of the conerns that, I believe, God has laid on your heart. Hurray! I always look forward to posts on your blog. You are a sort of "sheep herder" for the rest of us, if only by providing a person and site where different wandering, searching, hungering, and curious "back-benchers", pastors, and church members can stop by and meet each other. I am very thankful for your work here and how it's impacted myself and others in the Quaker blogosphere. By the way, I was frankly surprised, when I first searched for Quaker blogs, how little they had to write about Quakerism. Nothing particularly wrong with that, but honestly it was rare or nothing. And you are completely accurate about the Quaker news groups. I participated in that for about six months in the late 1990's. Can you say, "let's argue about politics and economics ad nauseum", anyone? Ahhh! The Quaker blog community, in all its spectrums, is a much more nurturing, helpful, and engaging experience. Praise God! And you have been a big part of that. Verily! So thanks again, you, Friend, you! And congrats on the 10 year anniversary of Nonviolence.org.

By: Robin M.

Robin M. — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 11:27:59 +0000

Gee, Martin, I went from a woman with a full life and a fulfilling relationship with my Quaker Meeting, to a woman with the same life who really just wants to sit around and read Quaker blogs. Sometimes I’m not sure this was a good thing…
On the other hand, my relationship with my Monthly, Quarterly and Yearly Meeting has taken on new perspective since I first started reading the Quaker Ranter about eight months ago. I appreciate what I have here more.
I have traveled more widely among Quaker circles than I ever would have without the Internet connection: evangelical Friends’ blogs, reports on FGC, FUM, Northwest YM, Northern YM, Iowa YM©.
I’ve read some wonderful books because they were recommended by bloggers: Howard Brinton’s Quaker Journals, for one.
And I find that I am not just making new friends, but I am meeting friends of friends — not that I personally have ever met many bloggers, but many of the bloggers I read are known in real life by somebody I do know. Does that make sense? The Quaker world is not that big, maybe we’re all within three or four degrees of separation. And I think that strengthening these bonds is good for all of us. The few friendly conversations I’ve had by phone and email and in person! with other bloggers are a support and a joy.
So thank you. Really.

By: Chris M.

Chris M. — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 01:42:41 +0000

Martin,
Heaps of blessings upon you for this ministry! I’ve been an enthusiast ever since finding your site through Lynn’s last spring.
Man, I know what you mean about the newsgroups and listservs. I signed up for Quaker‑L before Quaker‑P split off and ended up signing off after a year or so.
I haven’t had as much time to follow blogs or post as I’d like, in small part because I am blessed to be fully engaged in my monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings, in contrast to the experience Martin and others have had.
I hope to have more to say about how I found Quaker blogs soon on my OWN new blog, Chris M.: Tables, Chairs and Oaken Chests. However, I’m starting off with a silly topic that means a great deal to me, because it’s been on my mind for months now.
Really, Martin, thank you for your service.

By: Martin Kelley

Martin Kelley — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 13:05:40 +0000

Hi Liz: Oh yes, the Gathering bookstore is a great place for conversations like that!
Lynn: that’s right, yours was one of the few blogs when I started.
It’s interesting to see how the tone of blogs have differed from the Quaker newsgroups that preceded them (and that continue of course). I never could stand too much of the newsgroups: the over-intellectualized hollowness and mean-spiritedness of too many of the conversations. It didn’t seem like many of the regulars were (or could be) involved in the humanness of a monthly meeting. The average Quaker blogger might not be the consumate committee-Friend but at least we’re in the meetinghouse. So many of us have a hard time feeling fully engaged in the meeting life and I wonder if it’s because Friends today have so de-emphasized the kind of roles we might natural play in our meetings. I’m reading 18th Century minister “Samuel Bownas”:http://www.quakerbooks.org/get/0–87574-911–9 now and I’m wondering if today he’d be another vaguely disenchanted backbencher wondering if he really fit it.
Kent and Kevin: you both speak to being nourished by a conversation you weren’t having before. It’s interesting to see how the internet is pulling us out past our meetinghouse doors into fellowship with the larger Quaker church. This is a kind of traveling ministry sometimes, isn’t it?

By: Kevin

Kevin — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 10:09:58 +0000

Martin,
Congratulations on the milestones! And many thanks to you for your online ministry. Prior to discovering QR, I was beginning to feel spiritually dry and out-of-place in my relationship to my monthly meeting and Friends in general. As I cast about in frustration for Quaker spiritual sustenance of the kind that wasn’t written down 300 years ago, I came across this site — and through it, the vibrant Quaker blogging community you mention.
The resulting change in my personal spiritual practice, and in my feelings of connectedness to Quakerism, has been deep, quiet, and profoundly refreshing. Thank you for holding open this virtual door through which I was able to discover Friends in the Light whom I had never met before.